


Headfirst to Haywire

by ectozommer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (Past) Lovers to Enemies to Friends to Lovers Again, Alternate Universe - Professors, Human Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, castiel teaches enochian and dean teaches cryptozoology, in a world where those are classes at a university
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27972335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectozommer/pseuds/ectozommer
Summary: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.Really, it goes something like this: two professors, a book, the angels' tongue, and a university funded road trip.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	1. Pressure Points

The sun is 91.575 million miles from earth. The earth is rotating around it at approximately 67,000 miles per hour. The earth is full of people, people who need to sleep, to eat, to blink, to breathe, to survive, and keep on surviving. Castiel knows these things. Some days, he thinks it’s all he knows. But it’s enough to hold on to. 

He doesn’t hate his job. Quite the opposite, in fact, he’s passionate about what he teaches, the pay is as good as it’s going to get, they put on good musicals, and the campus dining isn’t half bad. They’ve got a Subway, so. There’s that. He’s just...tired, is all. Because he really, truly tries. To...to connect, to foster his passion in others, to inspire, to watch a group of bright young faces sat in front of him with open eyes and ears and not lull them to sleep. He tries his best to be a good professor. Not too hard, no, he wouldn’t be one of those “Cool Teachers” who asks his students to call him by his first name. Enough to be likable. Maybe to leave a mark in a student’s life, to have someone remember something he said and take it as a golden nugget of wisdom to carry in their back pocket. As it is, he teaches Enochian to some sad nineteen-year-olds looking for language credits. He’d done classes on ancient societies before, ran a few religion courses, once got asked to head a Latin studies club that wasn’t completely student-led. He declined, but the intent was there. But Enochian was his first love, his introduction to language and ancient studies, and the position just sort of...fell into his lap. Well, actually, Dr. Matthias Greene (who had previously taught the class, ever so well, too) had fallen onto a metro track. But you know, falling is falling, however tragic. 

Castiel’s hardly opened the door to his classroom when he sees him. Perched on his desk, rifling through papers in the briefcase balancing on his knee. He clears his throat. “Hello, Dr. Winchester.”

“C’mon, Cas, you can call me Dean.”

“ _ Castiel _ .” He throws him a pointed glare and shoos him off his desk. “Please keep your ass off my papers.”

“Fine, be like that. Guess you don’t wanna see what I brought you…” He waves a stack of photocopies in the air. Castiel sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

“Hand it over.” He makes a gimme gesture with his hand until Dean forks over the papers, smugly watching Castiel leaf through them in rising shock. “You...I...This is-”

“I know.” The smile breaks out into a full blown, shiteating grin. “Real deal’s at home. Sam thinks it’s gonna fall apart in the sun or somethin.”

“How did you…?”

  
“Found it.”

“You. You  _ found  _ one of John Dee’s journals?”

“Was in a box of books dad kept in the attic. We were, y’know...cleaning out and all that.”

Normally, Castiel would give him a sympathetic look, but at the moment he’s too occupied squinting at the shitty copies for a better look. A read of it, anything. He’s had most of it memorized for years, of course, but translations online are nothing compared to an actual fucking honest to god journal. The  _ bible  _ of the Enochian language, the original textbook of a 16th century prophet. He’s acutely aware that his hands are shaking. “Why are you showing me this?”   
  
Dean frowns and straightens up a little. “Cas, I don’t hate you. I knew you would wanna see it, so.”

“Can I...Can I come over? Tonight? I want to see it. The real one.”

“I, uh.” He coughs and collects the photocopies, fits them snug back in his briefcase. Pauses to smooth out his suit. “Yeah. You know the…?”   
  
He gives him a blank, unimpressed stare. “I know the address.”   
  
“Right.” Dean rocks on his feet for a moment or two of awkward silence before he nods, points to the door, and walks off. 

Castiel spends the rest of his teaching block in and out of attention, only there enough to go through the motions of his carefully curated lesson plan. Names fly out the window, so for the most part it’s “yes, you in the green sweater” or “glasses. third row. not you, the other one-” and the headache of the century. The journal sits impatiently at the forefront of his mind, occupying it to leave room for little else. And, well. It’s been quite a while since he’s paid this much mind to Dean Winchester. He’s diving for his phone by the time the last student has just barely shut the door behind them. It rings for entirely too long.

“Hey! He stopped by, huh?”   
  


“ _ Sam.”  _ It’s hissed and venomous, but it earns him a chuckle from the other end.

“Sorry, sorry, I would’ve warned you! I wanted it to be a surprise....and I knew you’d call in sick if you knew he was coming.”

“Yes, that’s the idea. You could’ve at least texted me.”

“But you’re glad I didn’t, right?”

“...Well.” He huffs and settles back into his desk chair, fiddling with a scented pencil in his pen cup. He’d seen it in a shop window and he does so love the smell of honey. “I’m going over tonight.”

“Yeesh. Are you ready for that?”   
  


A heavy breath. He runs a hand over his face, scowls, and takes a deep whiff of the honey pencil. It helps. Sort of. “Probably not? I’ve got to see it, though.”

“You know, he really does wanna be on good terms. He misses you.”

“Yeah? Tough luck.”

“It’s been a year, Cas. You work in the same building, you see each other every day...You could at least be civil.”

“I’m going to hang up now. Goodbye, Sam.”

A sigh echoes through the phone. “Yeah, alright. Call me when you-”

Right, that’s enough of that. He loves Sam, really, but he doesn’t need a lecture every time they talk. Especially not about Dean. He’s got half a mind to tell him off about it one of these days, but he’s never been the best with confrontation. And besides, Sam has only ever wanted the best for the both of them. He knows that. Doesn’t make it any less frustrating, though. In the meantime, he’s got about half an hour to get his shit together. 

He can’t believe he’s sitting here combing his hair for  _ Dean Winchester.  _ The man smells like shitty cologne and cheap beer 80% of the time. And yet here he is, staring at his rearview mirror in the driveway, moving the same piece of hair in and out of his face. Clean and precise, in a dignified “look how far I’ve come” way, or a tousled “I don’t care enough about what you think to bother” kinda thing? He ends up going with a stupid Clark Kent sort of curl he regrets as soon as he shuts the car door, but he’s wasted enough time already. Putting it off isn’t going to make it any easier. He can do this. He talked to him earlier and everything was basically fine. They weren’t at each other’s throats, he didn’t burst into tears on sight. It’ll be fine.

...Right?

Right, yeah, right, this is fine. This is all gonna be just-

“Cas?”

He’s not sure how long he’s been standing on the doorstep, but Dean is in the open doorway, looking at him expectantly. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and ratty pajama bottoms. Of course he is. Castiel tucks his Clark Kent curl away.

“Dr Winchester.”

“Christ- Alright, come in.” He steps out of the way enough for Castiel to come inside. The familiarity of it forms a pit in his chest. Had he really missed Dean’s ugly wallpaper that badly? He half remembers laughing the first time he came over, but had kept quiet on why until a few months later. He offered to go to Home Depot with him or something, pick him out something sensible. They didn’t end up going. “Stop starin at it, I’m gonna get it replaced.”

“Are you?”

“Yeah, yeah, Eileen got on me about it.”

“Good for her.” He smiles despite himself and Dean shoots him a glare, but there’s no real anger behind it. Just the look he’d give him before he’d playfully swat at his arm and grumble something to the effect of  _ shut up, Cas.  _ He looks away. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

“Haven’t done much.” It’s a lie. Cas could pick out each new detail. He assumes most of it is John’s old stuff, so he steers away from prying. “Remodeled the bathroom a couple weeks ago, though.”

“Good. I always hated that tile.”

Dean gives him a short smile. He feels like he’s being spoonfed. “I know you did.”

“Do you mind, ah-” 

Dean turns and lifts two bottles of beer before he can finish. “One step ahead of you.”

“Sam Adams?” He laughs as he pauses to read the label, cracking off the cap while he’s at it. “Thought you were a Miller man.”

“I am. But you like Adams.”

“Actually, I uh. I don’t drink a lot of beer these days.” He says, and drinks it anyway. 

They down them quickly, if for nothing else than avoiding the silence. But Castiel is a lightweight, and a quick beer is enough to get him a little less...tightly wound. “So. You wanted to see the journal, right?”

“Please.” His voice cracks a little and he winces. Dean bows and shakes his head, laughs a little under his breath. “Oh shut up and show me-”

“Alright! Alright.” Dean raises his hands defensively and starts to lead him upstairs, but Castiel knows the way well enough to leave time to linger. His touch catches on the railing, feeling out the etches Dean had made trying to fix the newel post. Castiel had broken it once, knocked the thing clean off with his briefcase. He’d stood there, frozen, hands over mouth and profusely apologizing. Dean had just stood there staring at it until he started, ever so quietly, to laugh. It was contagious, that laugh.  _ It can be fixed, Bee, don’t you worry.  _ “Over here.”

He snaps back to reality, standing in the doorway of Dean’s office. It hadn’t been an office when he’d known him. It’d been storage/Sam’s old hunting stuff/”Cas’ art room.” Now, it’s empty save for a desk, a small lamp, some posters of various cryptids, and a leather desk chair. He swallows thick.

Dean picks a bagged book from the desk, yellowed and worn and barely hanging by a thread. “Dunno how it stayed together all this time. The leather, probably? He didn’t take good care of em or anything, just an airseal bag. Miracle it made it.”

“Well, angels.”

“Yeah, right. Angels.”

“Gloves?”   


“...What?”

  
“Do you have gloves?”

“Oh- yeah, one second.” Dean runs out and comes back a good few minutes later with a pair of blue latex gloves. Castiel is pretty sure they're from the same box he'd gotten him two years ago, for washing dishes. He never really wore them. “These work?”

“Good enough.” Castiel tugs them on and gets to work, slowly and cautiously slipping it out of the bag. He feels silly tearing up as he leafs through the pages, but he smiles softly and nudges a tear from his eye. This is it. If he holds nothing else ever, in his life, he could die a happy man.

“You alright?”

“Fine.” He doesn’t spare a glance up, too focused on thumbing over the age old markings. These were the first  _ ever  _ printed Enochian letters. And he’s holding them in his hands. He coughs away the lump in his throat, but the little laugh he lets slip comes out far too watery anyway. “They sure cut some from the publications!”

He loses track of himself in it, of time, but he meets Dean’s eye when he looks up. It’s quick, just before he looks away, but he catches it there. If his eyes well up, he can blame it on the journal. “I don’t want to put too much stress on it. Old bindings. I don’t suppose I could come back…?”

“Any time.” 

Castiel nods, and then he’s packing the book away again and slipping off the gloves. He throws them in the wastebin beside Dean’s desk. He’s less emotional by the time they’re downstairs again, and when he takes a deep breath he’s confident that he can talk without blubbering. “Thank you. Really.”

Dean’s lips twitch up. “Stay for another drink?”

“I ought to be going. Work in the morning, you know how it is.”

“Papers to grade, students to fail…”

“I’ll have you know I’ve never failed a student!”

“Ha! Tell that to Jean Kismet, she had both of us last year. And boy did I get an earful about you, Professor Novak, you are a cruel, cruel man.” Dean laughs and laughs, and Castiel feels himself laughing too before he can reign it back in.

“Well, maybe once or twice.”

“Ten or twelve…”

Castiel points a warning finger at him. “You shut your mouth and stop keeping me here any longer, Winchester.”

Dean leans to hold the door open for him. “By all means.”

He’s still laughing when the door shuts behind him. He’s still laughing, little huffs of hot air in the cold night, when he clambers back into his car.

It’s a long, quiet drive home.


	2. Don't Let's Start

“Once a cheater, always a cheater.”

“He didn’t cheat on me.”

“He didn’t tell you he was married!”   
  


“To his  _ work.  _ That’s different.”

“Well, you talked about it like he had a secret harem.”

“It wasn’t like that.” He glares up at Gabriel over his coffee. “Besides, it’s not like I’m going to do anything.”

“You said that last time.”

“I didn’t mean it then.” This earns him a glare in return, which serves him about right. Gabe’s right. Guess there really is a first time for everything. “It’s different now.”

“Whatever you say…” He says it in that singsong way he hates and looks off to the side, still clutching his coffee with both hands. “When are you supposed to go over again?”

“Tomorrow. He’s been by my office a few times since, though.”

Gabe waggles his brows. “Anything interesting?”

“Not really. I’m not even there. He just leaves notes.” He rummages around in his coat pockets for a moment and dumps a handful of crumpled sticky notes on the table. Gabe whistles. “He knows my schedule, so…”

“Lemme at em!” He immediately grabs one and sets to work on unraveling it, grimacing at the crinkling on the already messy handwriting. “ _ Sammy says there's some weird circle-y shit in the journal he wants you to translate. Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you.  _ Ugh. Not even a winky face or anything!”

“Are you on my side or not?” Castiel snatches the note back out of his hand, shoving it back into his pocket. “I told you there wasn’t anything interesting.”

“Unless work means  _ work…” _

“Gabriel. Leave it.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and goes back to sipping his coffee. He’s going to need a lot of it if he’s going to make it through lunch with his brother, especially if he’s going to be this nosy the entire time. He really shouldn’t have mentioned Dean at all. “We work together, okay? We’re just colleagues doing each other an academic favor.”

“...He didn’t have to show it to you, though.” Gabriel pops a few fries into his mouth and holds a finger up while he swallows, then takes a huge bite of his burger. “MMghe coulgghve-”

“Dear god- finish chewing, Gabe.” 

“He could’ve-”

“Better.”

“Let me finish! ...He could’ve just taken the journal, had a little looksie, and then shipped it off to some fuckin...museum or something! Get some money out of it! Or...or showed it to the university and gotten his dumb mothman shit a budget increase! But instead, he shows it to  _ you.  _ Why do you think that is?” He looks at him like he’s Sherlock God Damn Holmes and twirls a fry around before taking a bite.

“I’m not stupid, Gabe. I know he’s trying to...fix things. Be friends.” He takes the first tentative bite of his salad. “I just haven’t decided if I’m going to let him.”

“...Cassie. C’mon. I mean- He basically handed you your dream on a silver platter.”

“I  _ know,  _ I know.” He waves his brother off and drives his fork into a cherry tomato hard enough to send juice flying. “It’s just a lot. It’s like bribery. So if it’s all peaches and cream now, I’m...cheap.”

“Fine, make it even. So what are you gonna do for him, cage up the chupacabra? Nail yourself a Nessie?” 

Castiel steals a fry to throw it at his face. All in all, lunch isn’t too awful. But he must be looking pretty worse for wear, because the woman at the counter made sure to smile and give him extra croutons.

He’s never checked it before, but he’s sure his Rate My Professor score is going to drop through the ninth circle of hell by the end of this lecture, the last of the day. He’s not a saint by any means in terms of manners, but he doesn’t go out of his way to be rude. He’s been...harsher though, recently. And he shouldn’t be, he knows these kids are trying just as hard as he is, especially with the weight of student loan debt on their backs, but if he hears the same question one more time today he’s going to lose his mind. 

“Professor Novak?”   
  


“Yes, Robert?”

“Can you explain that last bit? About the boxes?”

Castiel, who had quite literally  _ just  _ explained it, grits his teeth and nods. “Do try to listen next time, hm? I don’t like repeating myself, Mr Davies.” Robert sinks in his seat and nods. Castiel carries on for a good few minutes, then deflates a little, laser pointer still in hand. Robert remains halfway down his seat. His problems aren’t his students’ fault, and the last thing he wants is for anyone to be scared of him. But if he isn’t thinking about the journal, he’s thinking of Dean, and both are a thorn in his side at the moment. He resolves to pull Robert aside at the end of class, just as he’s collecting his bookbag. 

“Robert?”

“...Yeah?” He looks at him wide-eyed and immediately pauses in fitting his textbook between his notepad and laptop.

“I apologize for my shortness with you. You’re a good student.” He smiles and rests a hand on the desk in front of him. “I’m greying, Davies, my temper’s on a shoestring.”

“Aren’t you like thirty-six?” Robert laughs and continues putting his pens in the pockets of his bag. 

Castiel shrugs. “Something like that.”

By the time he’s seen Robert off, he’s hardly got any time to get his own things together before he’s off back home. He’ll have to stop somewhere quick to eat, he’s too exhausted to cook and he’ll puke if he so much as looks at another TV dinner…

The door creaks open. He doesn’t look up from the folders he’s forcing back into his briefcase. “Office hours are closed on Thursdays.”

“I know. That’s why you weren’t supposed to be here.” He jumps. When he looks over, Dean is leaning against the door with a smile, holding a sticky note between two fingers. 

He rolls his eyes and starts shoving things in his case more forcefully. “My apologies, I’ll try to leave my classroom quicker for you.” 

“Easy, tiger.” Dean comes to stand beside his desk, looking over his shoulder to thumb over lesson notes and research papers in dire need of grading. “What’s up?”   
  


“Nothing’s  _ up.”  _ He huffs and swats Dean’s hands away from his things, then gives in when Dean looks at him unimpressed. “...Just stressed. I’m fine.”

Dean hums but clearly doesn’t buy it for a second. He doesn’t pry, though, so Castiel is at least grateful for that. He finishes packing up pretty quickly and turns to face him, straightening his back to feel both taller and prouder than he is. “So, do you have something to tell me? Or were you just here to drop this off.” He reaches to flick at the sticky note Dean is still holding.

“Yeah, uh. Just this.” He holds it up unceremoniously and sticks it to the edge of Castiel’s desk lamp. “Just an update.”

“And you couldn’t have told me in person because…?”   
  


“Didn’t think you’d want to see me any more than you have to.”

They stare. 

First at each other, then anywhere but. After twenty seconds or so, Castiel coughs into his fist, grabs his briefcase, and leaves without a word. He’s getting pretty hungry, and Burger King isn’t going to pick itself up. 

He hates fast food. It’s greasy, they always get at least one part of his order wrong, and the line for the drive-thru is always longer than it’s worth. But they do have ice cream, and he thinks he deserves that little comfort. 

Their ice cream machine is broken.

When he gets home, he eats the shitty onion rings and cries for a good fifteen minutes. It feels sort of nice, and sort of devastating. He falls asleep with his tie tight and his shoes on.  _ 91.575,  _ he tells himself.  _ 67,000. _

He feels like he’s hungover. He didn’t drink anything, but the chicken burger and stale onion rings hadn’t done his stomach much good. He half considers sending out a mass email telling his students not to bother showing up, but forces himself into the shower at the last minute. With a coffee and some Tylenol, he’ll live. It still takes him most of the drive over to feel slightly awake, but he throws his classroom door open like he’s having the time of his life anyway. Fake it til you make it, right?

And oh. Right. He picks up the sticky note still clinging to his lamp.  _ Extremely important: text Sammy ASAP. We need to know if you want wings or pizza tomorrow!  _ He shakes his head and stuffs it in his pocket. He...maybe, probably, shouldn’t have been such a dick yesterday. But the Tylenol is already giving him a fighting chance against the headache he’s had all week, so hopes for smooth sailing tonight isn’t too far gone.

Now he has to go. No getting out of it. But at least he’ll get a better look at the journal (and a good helping of buffalo wings.) He decides not to meet up with Gabe for lunch again today, because he can only handle so much. Gabriel has to be taken in small doses, preferably with at least a week between. Now that they’ve been out of the same house for 20-odd years, this is something he can (and does) maintain. It’s not that he doesn’t like his brother, he’s funny and all. It’s just that getting his cheeks pinched with an “aww look at my wittle baby brother, all grown up” over a cramped cafe booth as if he’s changed monumentally within the past week  _ stops _ being funny after the first, what, two times? And so: lunch every Wednesday, no more no less. 

His nerves are shot through the roof, so the day goes by in the blink of an eye, because isn’t that just the way? ...Would it kill him to have a cig? He can already feel the leg not frozen to the pedal violently bouncing, hands getting clammy as he tries to zero in on the faded road in front of him. It’s been two years since the last one. He hadn’t even smoked after Dean, and god had he wanted to. It’s been long enough now that he’s stopped carrying gum, but he’s itching for...anything, really. He rummages through his glove compartment for about five minutes before he finds an old tin of altoids and decides that’s close enough. His breath smells minty fresh, at least, with a good handful of them. Actually, it burns a bit. He chokes down another two or three.

He takes a deep, deep breath before he knocks. God grants him one small mercy, as Sam is the one to answer the door. He’s practically yanked in as Sam wraps an arm around his shoulder and loudly (and rather enthusiastically) announces to the living room: “He’s here!” Which is enough of a clue for Castiel to determine that the drinking has started without him. Eileen cheers from the sofa.

“So I am.” He gives a halfhearted wave and signs hello to Eileen before he sits next to her. She’s his drinking buddy, and the sole reason he’ll make it through the night. He’d taken some ASL classes way back when, and she’d worked on teaching him some more when he’d been around regularly. He remembers most of it, vaguely, but he’s thankful that she’s able to read lips. “I missed you.”

“Missed you more!” Eileen smiles at him and makes a little “oh!’ before rushing up to show him to the kitchen, as if he’d have forgotten where it was. There is, sure enough, a few tinfoil trays of wings that he heaps up a mountain of. He has the feeling that he’ll be needing a lot to eat, if only to give himself something to get out of talking. Of course, it won’t be too terrible now that he knows Sam and Eileen will be sticking around.

“Has anything important happened while I’ve been gone? Progress on the journal…?”

“Not yet.” The voice comes from behind him, but he doesn’t need to turn around to know Dean is sipping a beer and leaning against the counter. He likes to play a game in his head sometimes, some sort of petty jab at Dean’s predictability (and terribly drab wardrobe.) And so, he’s betting...the red and grey flannel with the missing button. He always wore that between laundry days, and he’d always done the wash on Fridays to give him the weekend to put a decent work outfit together. He turns and...damn. The green one, with the obnoxiously large breast pocket. Of course. Miracle tore up the red one last spring before they had to give him up to Sam. “Couldn’t read the damn thing without you.”

“Right.” He holds up the plate with a half smile. “Well, let’s eat, and I’ll get around to it.”

It’s a lot more laughing than he expected. More than he’s done in a long while. He doesn’t drink much, but Sam’s half wasted and parroting jokes from a shitty standup special. He even tries to talk them into karaoke, which Castiel vehemently denies, and Eileen takes the endlessly entertaining opportunity to aggressively sign  _ I’m deaf, Sam.  _ Dean sits back in his recliner for most of the night, discarding chicken bones on the floor and making eye contact to grin with the bottle still pressed to his lips. They end up playing cards, which Castiel is pretty damn good at. He’s got a killer poker face. He wipes the floor with them for the most part, but Dean puts up quite a fight. He’d always been competitive. They stare each other down, one on one after Sam had been too out of it to participate and Eileen too humored by their smack talk to play much of a part. He makes it out of the several, several rounds of Texas hold’em with a clean fifty dollars in his back pocket, because Dean Winchester doesn’t know when to quit. It wouldn’t have been much if they hadn’t been betting by the dollar.

Once they’ve had their fill, Castiel washes his hands thoroughly and tugs the gloves on tight. Sam watches from the doorway, arm in arm with Eileen in equal parts comfort and support. Dean stands in the corner of the room, arms crossed and chewing on the tip of his thumb. Just as cautiously as the first time he’d done it, Castiel pulls the book from it’s bag. He flips through pages until Sam leans forward to tap on a certain one, thumbing it down for him. He nods and skips to it, eyes flickering over various symbols accompanied by a few short sentences. “I...don’t recognize these.”

“What do you mean?” Dean makes his way over, brows still perpetually furrowed.

“I think...sigils maybe? Hard to say, I haven’t seen many of them.” He flips a couple pages ahead, but it’s nothing he hasn’t read before in slightly altered, published copies. “These pages were omitted. From the widely sold books. Whatever it is, it’s either entirely irrelevant or…”

“Or?”

“Or someone down the line decided the public couldn’t see it.” He traces over the symbols printed there, small but decipherable, if he knew the right order to read it in. He hasn’t had much practice with ancient angel-related sigils, if you could believe it. “I can get to work on getting a read for it, but it might take...a while.”

“How long is a while?” Dean’s got that frustrated edge to his voice he’d get when they argued, which wasn’t often, but he knew the sound of it well enough. It feels like taking skin to a cheese grater. “Weeks? Months?”

“Sorry, are you in a rush? I wasn’t aware I was operating on a schedule.” He doesn’t mean it to sound as bitter as it does, but it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. He watches Dean’s hands twitch to yank the book away so he pulls it tight to his chest and meets his eye. One moment. Two. Three. Dean’s shoulders fall. Castiel shuts the book gracefully and tucks it back into the bag.

Sam coughs from the doorway, awkwardly tapping his fist to the doorframe a couple times. “Uh, Eileen and I are gonna jet, so. Night.” He jerks a thumb behind him and gives Castiel a goodbye smile. Eileen takes the keys and helps him down the stairs, each thump of feet on steps echoing in the tense silence on the office.

“I appreciate your help, Cas, I do-”

“Then act like it.” He steels his gaze to the best of his ability, ignoring the way his fingers reach to furiously scratch at his palms. 

“I know.” It’s quiet for a moment, just the ticking of the clock on the wall. He’s pretty sure he left it here, but he’s got a new one so there’s no use in asking for it back. It’s a minute off, anyway. “Been workin on that.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“Listen, there’s no...deadline, just-” Dean takes a deep, shaky breath. His voice comes out like gravel under tires. “Dad wouldn’t have had somethin like this for no reason. I was hopin…I dunno. Thought maybe it would make it all make sense.”

Well, great. Now Castiel feels like a dick. That’s become a trend, lately. He sighs and looks askance before he hesitantly rests a hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean’s eyes shift, widen, and flicker between it and his face. “I understand. I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you.”

“Goodnight, Dean.”

Gabriel will be thrilled to hear that he’s making it even.


End file.
